


Pterylae

by M_arahuyo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 20:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13818570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_arahuyo/pseuds/M_arahuyo
Summary: Dr Angela Ziegler and Dr Moira O'Deorain hate each other.





	Pterylae

**Author's Note:**

> ~~also known as the crow and the dove~~
> 
>  
> 
> only _slightly_ angsty, _slightly_ dramatic. def some romance if you squint. a muse came to me and i clung to it. 
> 
> simple, light, and short. enjoy!!

Angela hates her.

Which might not make sense to anyone who’ll bother to pay attention since they work vastly different fields and hardly need to consult each other. But she is smug, and she is arrogant, and does not seem to share in Angela's idea of an ideal workspace.

Angela stares at the briefcase of needles and vials and a plethora of a many other tools that have blades and glinting edges. The briefcase that is placed carelessly atop _her_ desk, suffocating all of _her_ documents. A vial is balanced precariously on the corner of the briefcase. She lets it fall and shatter.

“Dr O'Deorain,” she says curtly when not even the vial's racket could get the other woman to stir. She hears a faint mumble: something like _that's not right, again_. She feels her jaw harden. “Dr O'Deorain. _Moira_.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Your things,” Angela says slowly, “are on my side of the lab again.”

Moira says nothing. Long enough that Angela thinks she either didn't hear or is just very good at ignoring things. Considering the kind of person Moira is, she decides it's the latter. “Moira—”

“I've no use for those anymore,” Moira snaps. “I don't need them here.”

“Then why put them _here?_ ”

“ _Because I've no use for them anymore_ ,” Moira repeats condescendingly.

Angela turns to look at her with clenched fists. Moira is ducked over her workbench, slender shoulders jutting like bony wings, shadow splayed on the wall like a crow. “Moira.”

“Just push them off your desk if they're bothering you that much and stop bothering _me_.”

Angela has half a mind to actually consider that. But she is still Angela, still meticulous, still clean, and she shuts the briefcase to take it out of the lab and into the storeroom. When the cleaners come tomorrow, she'll tell them to dispose of the briefcase properly.

Moira is reclining on her own chair when Angela comes back. She takes one look at Angela and wears her smirk as proudly as Angela wears her Head Surgeon coat everywhere. Angela rips the coat off of her and can only wish she could do the same to Moira's smile.

 

* * *

 

Moira hates her.

The lab is big, the bunker bigger. But neither is big enough to prevent Angela from sensing Moira's ire whenever she's around. It doesn't help at all that Moira seems all too intent to make this annoyance as obvious as possible.

Angela is still figuring out how the hospital director failed to mention that the _brilliant, ambitious scientist_ she was to share his private research bunker with is also a _spiteful, unpleasant slob_. They were friends in school, he had said. Angela can't imagine that sweet, generous old man being friends with this nasty sample of a woman.

Angela walks into the lab and Moira's eyes narrow like some knee-jerk reaction, a minefield click. Angela turns her back to her and prepares to bury herself in the organized rubble of her research.

“Good evening, doctor,” Moira says blandly. The lab is big, the bunker bigger. Her voice echoes. Angela knows she means it to.

“Good evening,” she replies dryly.

She hears the squeak of wheels and the tap of heels. On an instinct she's thought she's long gotten rid of after middle school, Angela tenses when the footfalls get near. Paralyzed by the thought that Moira is somehow coming over to mess with her, ruin her work, take one of her precious drafts and dangle it over her head while she struggled on the tips of her toes—

But Moira just walks past her with little more than a snicker.

And somehow, from her, that kind of treatment irks Angela more.

 

* * *

 

Angela hates her.

She's a professional, though. A mature woman, definitely, and she doesn't want to say it out loud like some indignant child, especially with her lip wobbling and her fists trembling like this. Moira's face is the same monument of smirking smugness but this time, there's a hardness to her eyes that doesn't fit the rest of her face. Angela takes a step forward.

“I didn't take your drafts.”

“Then _who_ did?” Angela demands shakily. She points angrily to her desk, her workbench, her shelves and drawers and bags she's now ransacked. “They’re not here!”

“Have you asked the cleaners?” Moira asks coolly.

“They would never take anything from my workspace! They know better than to! Tell me where you took them! My drafts!”

“I did not take them.”

Angela is breathing hard. “You’re a _liar_ ,” she seethes. “You’ve hated me since I got here. You've been trying to get rid of me and take this place back for yourself!”

Moira advances and she is tall, so much taller than Angela. Angela doesn't waver. “The fastest way to be rid of you is for you to finish your work,” Moira replies coldly. Angela trembles, finds it hard to meet her eyes now. “Why would I sabotage the only hope I have of your leaving?”

It's a rational retort. But anger isn't rational—it rarely is. Angela swallows and swallows again and wrenches herself off of Moira's space to go back to her shelves like _maybe it's here maybe she missed a spot maybe it got buried_. Moira walks away.

And when she comes back, she yanks Angela by the collar of her coat to turn her around. She shoves a stack of papers onto Angela's chest and Angela looks down at it: her creased drafts. A colorful cut of tin foil is stuck on the topmost paper. A thick stain of chocolate are on the edges.

She had been eating a candy bar earlier.

“In the trash,” Moira supplies flatly. Angela stares stupidly at the documents. “Go home, doctor. Eat something proper. Take a shower. Go to bed.” Moira turns around and stalks away. “And clean up your face. Stop hiccupping like a toddler.”

Angela feels the burn of a blush with the moist of her own tears. She rubs the wetness sloppily with the sleeves of her coat. Trembling—and hiccupping still, _hiccupping_ —she jams the documents into her satchel. Moira's back is turned to her, hunched over her workbench again. Angela doesn't spare her a good bye as she heads out.

She hates that she knows she's just too embarrassed to.

 

* * *

 

Moira hates her.

But that doesn't stop her from clicking her tongue in disapproval as Angela fails again and again to accurately slather the wound on her back with the cleaning towel. Just because she doesn't have any modesty doesn't mean Angela is the same, though. Angela squeaks and hugs her chest and does all she can to hide her body away from the other woman.

Moira does little beyond blink. And smirk, of course.

“I didn't know you were into that kind of thing, doctor.” She tilts her head. Angela burns under her gaze. “Self-mutilation?”

“ _A test_!” Angela squawks, scandaled. The heat of dripping blood runs down her back and disappears into the waistband of her slacks. “My nanotech, I thought I'd made a breakthrough…”

“Obviously not.” Moira has never been one for subtleties when it comes to work and criticism. Why should the sight of a bleeding doctor change that? “Ever heard of test subjects? You have hundreds of wounded in that hospital of yours.”

“That is highly unethical, Dr O’Deorain.” Angela frowns. “Human testing is generally frowned upon. Even more so when it's done without approval.”

“So ask the hospital director. He's doing you this favor already.”

Angela purses her lips. She looks at the mirror behind her again, at the reflection of the too-big scrape on her back, and squeezes the towel. “You can see it's not ready for that.”

She tries two more times to clean up the wound properly with Moira standing over her. Three times, and Moira finally decides to take the towel from her and orders, “turn around.”

Angela bristles. “I—”

“Turn around, Angela.”

Angela sets her jaw and frowns but she's not stupid. An MD and PhD make her far from stupid. Moira can do a better job at this so she just spins on her stool and scowls at the floor.

Moira, with all her callousness and messiness, goes about cleaning the wound with the utmost care.

“The lengths we go to for science...” she murmurs. Angela twitches. “This is a big gash. Tried to cut off your wings, little dove?”

Angela flushes. She wishes she hadn't pinned her hair up because the warmth goes down to her neck, hot and red and stark. “I didn't mean it to be that big.”

“How did you even do this?”

A broken pipe, a lot of willpower. “That’s not important.”

They're quiet then. Moira cleans the wound and Angela sits stewing, glaring at the floor and every so often her drafts. Quiet, until Moira flattens a bony hand on Angela's back, until Angela gasps at the cold of it and shivers.

“It’s working.”

“What?”

“Your wound…” And Moira sounds so in awe, so breathless, that Angela turns around and stares as torn tissue and ruptured skin ripple, stretch, crawl. _So slowly_ , but—

“It’s working,” Angela whispers.

Moira is silent. She watches the reflection of Angela's back on the mirror and says, with awestruck conviction, “this will save millions.”

And Angela warms, and she dares not turn around to look at Moira.

“Millions,” she agrees.

 

* * *

 

Angela hates her.

But she still says yes when Moira taps her on the shoulder and asks for help moving something. It's not too big, not too heavy, but Moira is Moira and Angela's wrists are thicker than hers.

When Angela asks, Moira smirks and tugs the sheet off of the contraption. Angela can see then what made it so heavy—it’s made of steel and glass and is filled with what she can only describe as sloshing liquid or thick mist, a deep kind of purple, an iridescent shimmer of gold here and there. Tubes stick out at odd angles from the device and Angela paws at one, squinting.

“What is it?”

“Life,” Moira says with reverence. Angela raises her brows. “The center of my work.”

“What _is_ your work exactly?”

Moira looks at Angela and her smirk doesn't falter, but something in her eyes changes. She looks back to the device. “Genetic perfection. DNA modification at a cellular level. Infants born without diseases and abnormalities. Perfectly healthy human beings.

“A world without disabilities. Without discrimination. A world of higher science and a higher people.” Moira splays her hand on the glass of the device, a pale star on the swirling purple. Angela watches her with parted lips. She looks at the spidery fingers on the glass and thinks of the irregular curve of Moira's spine, the shape of her chest, the length of her limbs, the whispered complaints of discomfort in her joints. Diseases. Abnormalities. Disabilities. _Discrimination_. 

Angela knows there's a name for it. Has seen only some cases of it, but it's enough. Moira is watching her from the corner of her eye and Angela is too late to snap out of it.

“What are you thinking, Angela?”

Angela averts her eyes and stares determinedly at the device. “Gene editing?” Moira says nothing. “You’ll have a hard time getting a lot of people to support you.”

“And you?”

“What?”

“ _You_ ,” Moira asks, stiffly but she holds the smirk. Powering through. “Do you?”

A light flickers out in the hall. Angela knows it's been doing that for a while now but she still glances in its direction to have something else to look at. “There’s the question of morality to consider, Moira.”

Moira scoffs. She throws the sheet back on the contraption. When Angela looks at her, she doesn't look angry, no. Thoughtful. Determined. _Understanding_.

“Not anyone sees as I do, but I know it will help thousands.”

They meet eyes. A charged moment. A tender moment, one that Angela doesn’t know what to think of. Moira eventually leaves and Angela whispers, under her breath, “millions.”

 

* * *

 

Moira hates her.

And Angela hates it when she cracks a funny, _absolutely lewd_ joke that she can't help but laugh at because that just gives the woman more reason to be the self-assured little crap she is.

And she's pretty sure Moira hates it too when Angela's the one telling the jokes because they're so corny and so bad she just has to laugh, and that ruins her whole smirking, gloating image. 

Angela hates to admit it, but there's something good in Moira. 

Moira probably hates to admit it, but there's something brilliant in Angela. 

They hate it,  _they hate it,_ how the other's actually fun to work with. How they love being around each other. 

 

* * *

 

They hate each other.

But on Moira's last day in the bunker, Angela spares a moment to tell her congratulations. Moira smiles the same way she always does—smug, arrogant—but when she tells Angela _thank you_ , she means it.

“Maybe when I finish mine,” Angela says, “we could work together in the future.”

“I don't know about working together, but I have a feeling we'll definitely see each other again,” Moira quips. She smiles. Just smiles, for once, and Angela smiles back without realizing.

And she is surprised to feel herself hoping.

 

They hated each other.

But now, maybe,  _maybe,_ they don't. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you :')


End file.
